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Edmund Vincent Cowdry and the Making of Gerontology As a Multidisciplinary Scientific Field in the United States

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Edmund Vincent Cowdry and the Making of Gerontology As a Multidisciplinary Scientific Field in the United States This document is downloaded from DR‑NTU (https://dr.ntu.edu.sg) Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Edmund Vincent Cowdry and the making of gerontology as a multidisciplinary scientific field in the United States Park, Hyung Wook 2008 Park, H. W. (2008). Edmund Vincent Cowdry and the Making of Gerontology as a Multidisciplinary Scientific Field in the United States. Journal of the History of Biology, 41(3), 529‑572. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/96663 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739‑008‑9152‑1 © 2008 Springer. This is the author created version of a work that has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication by Journal of the History of Biology, Springer. It incorporates referee’s comments but changes resulting from the publishing process, such as copyediting, structural formatting, may not be reflected in this document. The published version is available at: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10739‑008‑9152‑1]. Downloaded on 01 Oct 2021 23:09:20 SGT Edmund Vincent Cowdry and the Making of Gerontology as a Multidisciplinary Scientific Field in the United States Hyung Wook Park1 Abstract. The Canadian-American biologist Edmund Vincent Cowdry played an important role in the birth and development of the science of aging, gerontology. In particular, he contributed to the growth of gerontology as a multidisciplinary scientific field in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. With the support of the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, he organized the first scientific conference on aging at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where scientists from various fields gathered to discuss aging as a scientific research topic. He also edited Problems of Ageing (1939), the first handbook on the current state of aging research, to which specialists from diverse disciplines contributed. The authors of this book eventually formed the Gerontological Society in 1945 as a multidisciplinary scientific organization, and some of its members, under Cowdry‟s leadership, formed the International Association of Gerontology in 1950. This paper historically traces this development by focusing on Cowdry‟s ideas and activities. I argue that the social and economic turmoil during the Great Depression along with Cowdry‟s training and experience as a biologist— cytologist in particular—and as a textbook editor became an important basis of his efforts to construct gerontology in this direction. Keywords: Edmund Vincent Cowdry, aging, gerontology, multidisciplinary scientific field, Problems of Ageing, the Gerontological Society, cytologist, textbook editor, the Great Depression The Canadian-American cytologist Edmund Vincent Cowdry (1888-1975) made a significant contribution to the development of gerontology, the science aging. While many intellectuals had discussed and studied aging for a long time, it became a subject of a more concerted and organized approach by professional scientists during the first half of the twentieth century, and Cowdry played a leading role in this development in the United States and other countries.1 He organized, with the support of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, the first scientific conference on aging in 1937 at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The scientists who gathered there contributed to the publication of Problems of Ageing: Biological and Medical Aspects (1939) which contained a comprehensive survey of current scholarship on the problem in various disciplines. As the editor of this volume, Cowdry encouraged the contributors to join the “Club for Research on Ageing,” an informal discussion group consisting of approximately twenty scientists. 1 Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Tate Laboratory of Physics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 116 Church Street SE, MN 55455. [email protected] 1 In 1945, core members of this Club established the Gerontological Society, Inc. which changed its name to the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) in 1981. He also played a major role in organizing the International Association of Gerontology and served as its second president. As historian W. Andrew Achenbaum and sociologist Stephen Katz have pointed out, these pioneering works by Cowdry contributed to the rise of gerontology in America as a multidisciplinary scientific field pursued by many eminent scientists with distinct academic training and norms.2 The Gerontological Society opened its membership to scholars in various fields, including biology, clinical medicine, psychology, and the social sciences. The Journal of Gerontology, the first official journal of the Society, also accepted research articles from diverse disciplines. The National Institute on Aging is another body that supports both biomedical and social scientific approach to senescence. In this article, I trace the birth and development of multidisciplinarity of American gerontology by focusing on Cowdry‟s thoughts and activities. Admittedly, multidisciplinarity is a controversial notion which is often used interchangeably with “interdisciplinarity” or “transdisciplinarity.”3 The scholars who constructed gerontology argued that the science of aging should be a field of multiple disciplines, which maintained close cooperative relationships with one another, just as the atomic bomb project during World War II was a closely integrated effort of physicists, engineers, and military personnel.4 Yet later scholars have thought that such a close integration and cooperation has not been feasible in gerontology, although many have thought that it is increasingly becoming possible. It is even said that gerontology is an applied field for helping the aged rather than a formal scientific discipline, since it has few paradigmatic theories or methodologies which are shared by every member in the field.5 Sociologist Julie Klein has described the nature of multidisciplinarity shown in these descriptions—it merely “signifies the juxtaposition of disciplines….essentially additive, not integrative.”6 In this article, I argue that while the later scholars‟ accounts of gerontology do reveal some aspects of its current state, they fail to show what the early gerontologists actually did. Although the cooperation among physicists, 2 engineers, and military personnel for constructing the atomic bomb was quite different from what gerontologists could do at that time, they nevertheless tried to develop their field in that direction and were successful in a large measure. The early gerontologists, many of whom were contributors to Cowdry‟s Problems of Ageing, shared a broad social concern for the elderly and helped other researchers from different fields during their research and writing on aging. Eventually, the gerontologists formed professional societies through which they discussed various aspects of senescence across disciplinary boundaries. I argue that the multidisciplinarity of early gerontology shown in this series of developments could hardly be called an “additive” “juxtaposition of disciplines.” Interestingly, Cowdry and other early gerontologists, many of whom came from biology and medicine, decided to include sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists as well in their organization. The inclusion of these scholars in gerontology was not anticipated by earlier researchers of aging, particularly the Russian zoologist Elie Metchnikoff, who coined the term, “gerontology” in 1903.7 In this paper, I argue that Cowdry‟s training and experience as a biologist—particularly as a cytologist—and as a textbook editor guided his endeavor to construct gerontology in this direction, especially amid the Great Depression. First of all, I show that his interaction with a number of eminent contemporary American biologists became a basis of his efforts to make gerontology a multidisciplinary field and to include sociological and psychological approaches as well biology and medicine in his new scientific field. In particular, I argue that the problems of aging that emerged during the Depression stimulated him to practice what he learned from these biologists and to garner cooperation from these and other scholars. I also point out that his experience in editing textbooks—including General Cytology (1924) and Special Cytology (1928)—provided the model of the actual implementation of this cooperation.8 Indeed, the common experience Cowdry and his biologist colleagues shared reveal how and why he made efforts to establish gerontology as a scientific field. Cowdry‟s teachers and friends—including Walter Cannon (1871-1945), Herbert Spencer Jennings (1868-1947), Edwin 3 Conklin (1863-1952), and Charles Judson Herrick (1868-1960)—belonged to the generation that experienced race riots, World War I, and the rise of fascism and communism during the early twentieth century.9 As Sharon Kingsland and other historians have argued, these biological scientists, worried deeply about such political turmoil, tried to offer a new vision of social betterment through the knowledge gained from their research on living organisms that solved their own problems through intimate cooperation and ingenious and dynamic social organization.10 Cowdry conceptualized the problem of aging in a similar way, after he came in contact with his teachers and colleagues at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. degree, and at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where many American biologists regularly gathered for cooperative research and leisure activities.11 Through his training and research there, Cowdry came to think that while elderly people were suffering from social isolation and economic hardships due
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